


Where There Is Light

by hitlikehammers



Series: No End To This Thing [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 'Til the end of the line, Anal Sex, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Takes Care of His Stevie, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Captain America: Civil War Fix-It, Credits Scene Fix-It, Emotional Sex, Feelings, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Healing, Hurt Steve Rogers, M/M, Oral Sex, Protective Bucky Barnes, Riding Steve Rogers 'Til Morning, Saving Steve Rogers from Himself, So Very Many Feelings and Other Such Emotive Things and So Very Very Much Love, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Steve Rogers Needs Healing Too, Supersoldiers in Love, T'Challa is Better Than You, The Long Hard Road Out Of Hell And Back to Oneself, True Love, Wakanda, recovered Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-06-07 01:00:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6778624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And the truth, in the end, was always going to be this: Steve could have searched forever for his Bucky, but it would have been in vain.</p><p>Because in <i>truth</i>, it had been Bucky—from the very first—who always came back for his <i>Steve</i>. </p><p><i><span class="u">Always</span></i>.</p><p> </p><p> <b>SPOILERS FOR CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR.</b><br/><b><i>**Final Installment of Post-CW Credits Scene Fix-It Series; First Installment <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6693928">HERE</a>**</i></b><br/><span class="small">Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/6759565">Carry Me Home</a>—because these boys don't just deserve a reunion. They deserve <i>healing</i>. <i>Together</i>. And I wanted to give them that.</span></p>
            </blockquote>





	Where There Is Light

**Author's Note:**

> And here's the end of this series. I think it does these boys and the story they deserve justice. I hope you think so, too. 
> 
> And more than that: I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for being so supportive and enthusiastic about these little stories. I had a lot of feelings and opinions both going into _Civil War_ and coming out of it; I'm really so very, very pleased that this resonated with some of you, as well  <3
> 
> And love, always, to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad); you're the best, darling. Always.
> 
>  
> 
> EDIT: Now with **[a companion/sequel-ish series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/892896)** , in which Bucky and Steve continue the fealing process in Wakanda in the lead-up to _Infinity War_.
> 
> Title credit [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kn7m9MjZN2I).

“I didn’t really look, last time.”

Steve’s gazing out the long wall of glass in their rooms, overlooking unobstructed splendor: falling water catching light, deep hues of uncontained life burgeoning in every direction, rock outcroppings serving sentinel posts, keeping watch.

It’s breathtaking.

“I mean, I _looked_ , but I didn’t, I was…”

Bucky’s hand starts at his hip, slides up to his shoulder and squeezes tight, while drawing him close, letting Steve ride the soft wave of his every inhale and exhale, moving for the sheer fact of life in the man that he loves as Bucky kisses the tender skin beneath his ear and whispers.

“I know.”

They stay that way, and Steve lets himself get lost in it, the way that Bucky’s left arm snakes around Steve’s waist and cradles him, in the way Steve’s own breath matches Bucky’s and makes it feel as if they’re just a single set of lungs taking in the world, and if he closes his eyes and makes it both fantasy and reality all at once, it’s almost that much sweeter, verification and embodiment of every wild, impossible dream. 

The only thing that breaks the trance is a light knocking on the open doorway behind them, and where Bucky shifts to acknowledge who’s there—never lets go, no, _never_ —Steve just lets the soft sound of flesh rapping wood blend into the steady beat of Bucky’s pulse and keeps floating for a little longer.

Just a little longer.

“Settling in?” a low voice asks that Steve recognizes, vaguely: the lilt but not the tone, so open and generous, porous for some degree of care.

“Yeah,” Bucky huffs in that way of his that’s just a smile making sound. “Fuck, T’Challa, thank you.”

And it’s interesting—overwhelming—in the back of Steve’s mind, that Bucky speaks with such feeling, but never goes to shake a hand, or embrace a host: just stays, with Steve, and holds to him.

Steve’s heart swells for that fact; hurts, a little, around feeling so much and so full after so _long_ , but Steve relishes it. Thinks he could live with it forever, if it means Bucky’s arms around him, Bucky’s heartbeat at his back.

“There is no need for thanks,” T’Challa says softly behind them, a smile there in his own voice, now; “You are welcome here always, you know this.”

And Bucky still doesn’t let go, but he turns his shoulders more fully to presumably look T’Challa in the eyes when he says it again, this time with a gravity that settles in Steve’s bones, too:

“ _Thank you_.”

And Steve turns then as well, in Bucky’s arms, and thank god that Bucky knows he’s not ready to be untangled, yet, to be on his own in the world again without that touch, because Bucky just moves, turns with him like it’s the most natural thing and keeps that warmth of touch unbroken as Steve meets T’Challa’s eyes in turn.

“Maybe _he_ is always welcome,” Steve says seriously; as serious as he can, at least, while unashamedly wrapped up in the heart he’s finally found again. 

“But _I’m_ not, so, yes,” Steve nods, a little deferrent as he speaks, because he needs it to mean more than just for now; he needs it to be everything he was too broken to say and mean and offer in gratitude before, too—and for everything that came of what T’Challa was willing to offer, to guide, to set in motion to bring them right back here, in more ways than one.

“Thank you.”

“Captain,” T’Challa shakes his head, but kindly: knowingly. “Our only grievance with one another was rooted in a lie.” His eyes flicker to Bucky, whom he regards with real fondness, Steve notes. “You are most welcome, as well.”

And Steve swallows, hard, and can only nod, but T’Challa seems an intuitive sort; Steve thinks he gets the idea well enough. 

“For as long as you need,” T’Challa says decisively, by way of ending what seems more a pseudo-conversation than anything else. “Bucky, you know how things tend to run.”

“We shouldn’t bother you,” Bucky answers with palpable gratitude.

“It would not be a bother,” T’Challa answers back, warmly. “Indeed, I hope that you will join me for meals at least, every so often.”

“Absolutely,” Bucky answers, with that same comfort in his voice.

“I’m keen to hear more on how the suit has served,” T’Challa adds, a little playful; a little sly; “and the shield prototype.” 

“Not the arm?” Bucky asks.

“We didn’t take any risks with your arm,” T’Challa nearly scoffs, but like, a kingly sort of near-scoff. Or something. “We were more,” he purses his lips around a grin; “ _creative_ , shall we say, with the others.”

Bucky’s head jerks back. “You telling me I was your _guinea pig_?”

T’Challa laughs. “Have you minded much, in practice?”

And maybe Bucky Barnes flips the King of one of the most advanced nations in the world the bird, but it only makes said King laugh harder.

“Take rest, gentlemen,” T’Challa bids them. “I’ll have something sent in for you, but please, make yourselves at home.”

And with that, he takes his leave.

“You seem friendly,” Steve observes idly, and maybe he tucks his face into Bucky shoulder, breathes him in a little deeper.

And Bucky just breathes, himself, for a little while; like he knows exactly how Steve takes comfort in that rhythm, etched deep in him for as long as he can remember; speaking of what it means to be safe and to live another day, always waiting to steady him when neither of those things were certainties he could hold on his own.

Bucky just breathes, and when he finally does speak, it’s in perfect tandem with the rise and fall of his chest: deliberate.

Steve fucking _loves_ him.

“You know how people say, yeah, that guy saved me?”

“Yeah?”

“That guy?” Bucky nods to the closed door, where T’Challa had stood just minutes before. “He taught me how to save _myself_.”

And Steve knows, his ma taught him: you repay those who give to you, you show them you’re grateful. But how do you show a man enough gratitude for helping bring the world back from meaninglessness? How do you thank _enough_ for putting color and shade onto a palette again—what is sufficient, in the whole of existence, to say _my heart was still beating but that’s only because they made it that way, they designed it for that, but it didn’t want to, it didn’t mean a goddamn thing until he looked at me and knew me and was free again and you sheltered him and gave him what he needed to get there and for that you saved two lives and one deathless love and how can I ever possibly thank you?_

Steve’s breath catches; he doesn’t know. 

But what he _does_ know is that Bucky holds him just a little tighter, and that’s enough to be the only thing that Steve ever knows again.

“That’s why we’re here, Stevie,” Bucky presses the words into the side of Steve’s neck. “Because I can love you, and I can hold you, and I will never leave you, but this place is the most peaceful, safest place I know, where I can _be_ your safety _and_ surround you in safety,” and he tightens his hold around Steve just as he turns them, chest to chest to speak against the bow of Steve’s upper lip, eyes so close Steve almost can’t see their color, but he can see Bucky’s whole self in the blacks of that gaze. 

“And in the places where not even my whole heart can save you from the shadows,” Bucky whispers, voice thick with emotion, with the effort to get the words out; “ _here_ , you’ll have your shot at learning that same lesson. That ability to save yourself.”

And Steve’s spent a lot of time and energy avoiding that piece, that idea of him _self_ —scrawny and angry and useless for so long and then bigger than a person in the blink of an eye: an ideal, and it was too much to hold, really, so he put it down, pushed it to the floor of his own mind and was strong enough in body to carry it around and pretend it didn’t weigh him to the bottom, sinking inside his own heart.

Steve’s never been one much for fear, but the idea of taking that weight and lifting it, squaring it it, maybe leaving it behind: the idea of even _trying_ is downright fucking terrifying.

“You’ll help?” he rasps, as Bucky holds him harder, as Bucky kisses his skin for every anxious pump of Steve’s blood.

“Of course,” Bucky promises, easily: never something to doubt. “Won’t leave your side unless you ask me to.”

“Won’t,” Steve breathes, because that much, at least, he knows: “I won’t.”

And this, Steve realizes, is the test they never saw coming when they threw him in that chamber and made his body new—no.

 _This_ , here, is going to be the true measure of just how strong a man _really_ is.  
__________________________

In the beginning, they walk a lot. They sleep, oddly enough, a _lot_.

But of anything: they touch even more.

“I spent a lot of time here,” Bucky murmurs, as he leads them into an alcove where running water is the softest of sounds, like crystal; his hand is a constant in Steve’s hand as he sits them down, and then lays them out, sprawled against the grass as he kicks off his shoes and digs his toes into the soft earth and Steve feels giddy, somehow, at just the vision Bucky paints and so he follows suit, and there’s one of the heavy ornaments decorating his battered heart, making it easier for him to ignore how it’d been hurting for so fucking _long_ : those baubles he’s only just starting to notice, one of them slips away and crashes and vanishes with how the dirt feels against Steve’s skin, the way it’s warm and Bucky’s touch is unwavering, and he closes his eyes and just listens, and marvels at how one single weight gone, slipped quick and painless from his chest—he wonders at just how clear the difference is.

And when Bucky speaks, Steve resonates with every word, his body humming with each one in turn:

“I’d sit here, just breathing,” Bucky whispers, confesses, shares a part of his soul that knows how to slip into the place where the weights ‘round Steve’s heart are dropping and leaving him lighter, but at the same time vulnerable: Bucky knows, somehow, and Steve in turn knows how to take it all in—instinctual; innate. 

“Just remembering what it felt like to breathe without anything weighing even just that simple thing down,” Bucky says, that broad chest rising and falling with a depth that transfixes Steve for a moment: beautiful. “That core, that bread and butter of what it means to just, be _alive_.”

He breathes in deep again, a few more times, and Steve can’t help but stare at the stretch of his shirt for every movement, every instance of that _life_ he’s taking in, and Steve’s so caught up in it that he doesn’t even process himself mirroring the same pattern, doesn’t notice right away when Bucky eyes flutter open and fix themselves upon Steve.

“C’mere,” Bucky says, and Steve needs no more invitation. He curls into Bucky’s outstretched arm and sighs deeply when said arm curls around him in turn.

“I doubted, a lot,” Bucky speaks into Steve’s hair. “When I was here, before.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that, really. Steve’s noticing, more and more these days, that he just doesn’t know what to say.

He does, however, know that the sound of Bucky’s breath in and out of his lungs under Steve’s ear is more beautiful than the sound of the water in the wellspring before them, the rustle of full leaves in the breeze.

“You know what you mean to me, right?” Bucky says suddenly, and Steve’s pulse skips a little at all the things that might just mean.

“Do I mean to you,” Steve finally asks, in the only answer he knows; “what you mean to me?”

He looks up, and Bucky’s watching him with the sweetest gaze, bright and blinding.

“Everything?” Bucky asks softly, that single word fucking hemorrhaging _feeling_.

“Then yes,” Steve presses a kiss to Bucky’s chest, and then settles back against it. “I think I know.”

“Good,” Bucky counters with a kiss to Steve’s brow.

“I just,” he starts, shakes his head and kisses Steve’s hairline again. “There will be doubts, going through this, and it’s hard.”

And Steve’s starting to get that, yeah; but he aches for the idea of Bucky doubting for things he needn’t have; for Bucky doubting without Steve’s chest to rest _his_ head on. 

“I just wanted to make sure you weren’t doubting the most fundamental truth in the whole fuckin’ world, that’s all,” Bucky pulls him closer, and Steve gives into that hold like he’s only ever given in to Bucky; like he’s only ever known how to yield when there was _Bucky_.

And this is Bucky. This is _him_ , and Bucky.

This, he knows, is worth all the pain in whole goddamn world.

__________________________

They sleep pressed against each other, every night. It’s one of the most treasured memories Steve’s stored away from a time so long ago, brought back to life, and different, yes, but real—not just in the flesh-and-blood sense, but in the _I want you and I need you and my heart’s a mess and it sometimes veers toward stopping but it’s so very yours I don’t know what to do with it_ , out in the open, hand-in-hand kind of way—and it is therefore so much _better_.

And while it was difficult, at first, to wake them both up when Steve’s nightmares got the better of him, and left him gasping, clawing, _needing_ : while that was difficult, at first, it does get easier.

“Healing doesn’t mean being perfect,” Bucky whispers under his chin, his lips standing guard against the pounding heartbeat at the hollow of Steve’s throat until it settles—a settling that is largely, Steve suspects, because of that tangible reminder that Bucky’s not going anywhere.

“Being flawless, buffing out all the scars, the war wounds,” Bucky exhales against that thin-pulsing skin, kisses the thrust of Steve’s frantic blood.

“Healing doesn’t mean never having the nightmares, Stevie,” Bucky tells him, reassures every time even though Steve knows it; Steve hold Bucky when _he_ has his own bad dreams: even though Steve knows it, Bucky doesn’t get tired of reminding Steve how to _feel_ it.

“Healing means,” and Bucky kisses him softly when the words start to fail him, when he needs to regroup, and Steve doesn’t mind that habit one tiny little bit. 

“It means being able to sleep in the first place in order to wake up from them, and then knowing you can close your eyes and sleep again, after.” 

And so, in lieu of words, Steve cuddles into Bucky’s warmth, and Bucky curls just as close into Steve’s, and the give-and-take between them was never a spoken thing, never had to be.

It lives next to Steve’s heart and soul close enough to be a part of both; close enough that there’s no separating them out anymore.

No need to, either.

__________________________

Those pretty jagged things hanging off Steve’s heart are starting to fall in waves, now—and he understands, what Bucky meant, about doubt. About how it would hurt. How this was _hard_ in a way Steve had maybe never known.

But every lighter, wounded, unguarded place left open for the possibility of skewering is, without fail, covered strong and sure with the armor of what it means to be loved by Bucky Barnes, never more than an instant left to the cold, and so Steve thinks: yes.

He can do this.

He _needs_ to do this.

“I never wanted to be a weapon,” Steve speaks, and he feels the words rumble against Bucky body nestled close atop his own as Steve stares up at the sun gleaming through the canopy above, because of course Wakanda is a technological mecca nestled in the middle of paradise. Of course they’re splayed beneath trees that waft fruit and freshness—renewal, free to take in every breath.

“Or a symbol,” Steve adds, because it’s true. He took what he could because it was offered, and just as you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, you don’t look at the pack it carries, either; all the baggage, or the bad back leg that might give out if you’re not careful, in the end.

“I just wanted to help.”

And Bucky just runs the bridge of his nose up and down Steve’s sternum for a little while, before he runs up higher and kisses the underside of Steve’s chin, and murmurs simply there:

“I know.”

__________________________

For all the talking and the working through the feelings so long buried, Steve’s not gonna lie.

There’s a hell of a lot of amazing sex that happens, too: and that’s a healing all its very own. 

“I love you,” Steve pants, once night when the way they move together, the way they press into one another is particularly charged with an unspeakable need; “I’ve loved you for, for—”

“I’ve only ever _known_ how to love you,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s sweat-slick skin as his hips cant, as he thrusts into Steve and fills him beyond wondering or fear, makes him complete enough for it to linger even when he pulls back, in the space before he slides back in. 

“I died when you fell,” Steve moans, his heart raw when they’re like this, his tongue loose against its heavy-heady thumping. “I didn’t come back until you were here again.”

And Bucky doesn’t answer that with words, but with his body, with his hands on Steve’s hips drawing into him so deep that Steve can feel his own pulse against the pulse of Bucky’s cock buried in him, so close that he can feel Bucky’s heart straight through two sets of ribs, that he can breathe only what Bucky exhales, can only take in Bucky’s scent, and when Bucky chants his name and starts to falter and reaches for Steve’s hands and slicks his fingertip with the beads of arousal at Steve’s slit, teasing him gentle and delicate and soft with love up and down the length until they’re both lost, save for each other—well.

That’s an answer to every question Steve could ever think to ask. 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky gasps after a long moment, running hands over Steve’s body, apologizing for a past so far from now, but still sometimes an open wound.

“Don’t be,” Steve says, still a little dazed. “If anyone’s sorry it’s—”

“No,” Bucky shushes him. “No, let’s,” and he seems to think again, think better of this argument, this strand they’ve visited—less now, but often enough. 

“Let’s,” Bucky murmurs, licks a stripe up Steve’s torso and cleans every drop of want Steve’s spilled upon his skin with a leisurely devotion that makes Steve’s heart pound anew. 

“Let’s stop being sorry, yeah? For these things?”

And Steve just looks at him, and wonders if marvels will ever cease, for Bucky to ask that, for Bucky to have never once placed blame upon him.

“Look at us,” Bucky counters all those doubts swimming in Steve’s head; takes Steve’s hand and traps in between their naked frames. “We’re here.”

He kisses Steve’s fingertips and breathes with awe in it:

“We’re _here_.”

And Steve shivers on that exhale, because god: it’s almost too much. It’s almost too big, too many of the secret longings in his heart that never saw daylight, except here, _here_ that’s all they do and it’s beautiful, it’s, it’s—

“Ain’t no sorry in this, Stevie, is there?” Bucky asks, and Steve meets eyes that are uncannily blue, just then, and maybe that’s what feeling does. Pushes blood-in-vein to the surface, still dark from the heart, and makes that color hypnotic. Makes Steve reach out and _touch_.

“No,” Steve breathes, and moves to climb on top of Bucky, now, to press their already stiffening lengths back together as he gasps into Bucky’s swollen, well-loved lips:

“Not one damn _bit_ of sorry.”

__________________________

 

It’s just them in combat, hand to hand: Bucky says it helped, when he was here. 

Steve isn’t saying that it _doesn’t_ help him, but it’d be useless to pretend that the a shirtless Bucky blocking every attack _isn’t_ a distraction.

“What do you fight for?” Bucky asks, as if it’s a question that he couldn’t figure out for himself.

“You.”

And Steve thinks, since he knew Bucky, there was always a part of that in every punch he ever threw, and after— _after_ —in every life he ever took. Proving himself as worthy. Showing himself as desirable, as good enough. Taking vengeance, trying like hell to find something in the world that would fill the void, but only ever dug it deeper.

Bucky pauses, both his hands on Steve’s arm to block the blow, but neither of them make to move: breathing heavy, eyes locked.

“Who do you fight for?” Bucky pants, like he doesn’t know what else to do, like it’s part of a script that he has to finish, but he doesn’t need to, doesn’t need an answer that he’s already got.

“Thought that was obvious.” And Steve moves his arm, and Bucky doesn’t fight him, and he draws Bucky close without hesitance or thought, the muscles of that chest pressed against his own and Steve’s hands already going for the fly on Bucky’s pants.

“Jesus, punk,” Bucky moans, but Steve’s already on his knees, more of those weights in his chest falling with him as Bucky fills his being just as fully as he fills Steve’s mouth.

__________________________

They’re sated—they’d joined T’Challa for dinner that night, the food delicious and delicate in a way Steve had never allowed himself to enjoy before, all touched by the fertile soil he’s felt between his toes and there’s something healing in it, the sustenance and the company alike, and Steve understands why Bucky’d taken to T’Challa so well, and how the reverse came to be so.

And then they’d come back to their room, and made the slowest, most achingly soul-entangling, heart-shattering-and-renewing love Steve’s ever so much as imagined the human—or hell, even the _super_ human body being capable of, and oh. 

Oh, but it’s starting to feel different. Every bit of him. Every cell of him. He’d laughed, over dinner, and it felt weightless, honest in his bones. He’d let Bucky ride him slow and steady and lavish his chest through every frantic pump of his blood, and he’d cried for joy when he finally came, because he was inside Bucky, he was blanketed with Bucky, he was, it was—

 _Bucky_.

They’re lying, soft and curled on their sides, face to face, when Bucky reaches and brushes Steve’s hair from his face.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Bucky murmurs, his expression so soft as not to even spark a hint of fear in Steve for where the conversation might lead.

“What wasn’t my fault?” Steve asks, innocent, and leans into Bucky’s touch.

Bucky smirks a little, runs his fingers across Steve’s scalp, and Steve moans, just a little, for the sensation.

“All the shit in your head that you’re guilty about.”

“How d’ya know?” Steve asks, but that guilt is quiet, for the moment. It doesn’t surface to color his question like it used it. Miraculous. “Some of it might have been my fault.”

“How do I know?” Bucky huffs, eyes wide and bright, and he shifts a little, and there’s enough sweat still gleaming on their skin to make the slip of flesh on flesh a smooth, gilded kind of thing.

“I know, because the shit you _should_ be sorry for, like pickin’ fights or talking during sermons? That’s the shit you ain’t _never_ been sorry for.”

Steve giggles, bright and full and like a boy again: his heart suddenly light, lighter even than when he _was_ young, and this, maybe, is what Bucky was talking about. This, maybe, is the start of what it means to heal.

“Jerk,” Steve huffs back, and stretches full against the bed. Bucky rolls back on top of him, hands on Steve’s skin, up and down his arms, neck to elbows in a fine caress that Steve can’t help but relish. 

“You take the world on these shoulders, baby,” Bucky speaks quiet, soulful; “but they’re not build for that.”

For the first time, those words ring true, and don’t strike that bell of failure that resounds through Steve’s whole self; no. They are true. He does do that.

He’s not meant to.

Okay.

“I like that,” he says, instead of anything else.

“Hmm?” Bucky glances up, meets Steve gaze: and Steve knows his heart’s plain in his own eyes, just then.

“You calling me _baby_ ,” Steve says, his grin so big it almost hurts. “I like that.”

“Mmm,” and Bucky pecks his lips and lets his tongue line their crease. “My babydoll,” he says, like that’s the pinnacle of all being in the world. “My Stevie,” and that’s all Steve’s ever really _wanted_ to be, in the end.

And it’s funny. That’s the thing he’s got, closer than any other, lesser thing.

“What _are_ they built for then?” Steve asks, purely out of curiosity.

“What, now?”

“These shoulders,” Steve presses against Bucky’s hold against them. “What _are_ they built for? Why’d they make me like this, if not to carry what they couldn’t? If not to be able to—”

“These shoulders are broader than they used to be,” Bucky cuts in, doesn’t break eye-contact. Says with all his soul. “But they’re human, Stevie. They’re perched on top of a human heart, and goddamnit,” Bucky growls, nips at Steve’s mouth. “What are they _made_ for?”

“This,” and Bucky sucks the globe of one bare shoulder into his mouth and lavishes pure love upon the skin until Steve’s trembling, until he gasps when Bucky lets it go.

“And this,” Bucky kisses circles upon circles into the opposite shoulder, licks tiny, little hints of his tongue out at just the right places so that his heavy breathing runs cool over the trail he leaves.

“Fuckin’ sap,” Steve gasps, though on the inside he’s goddamn _glowing_.

“And this.”

And Bucky draws him in by his shoulders, so the lines of their half-hardening cocks, still slick with their climaxes, come together and send Steve’s heart pounding, and okay. He can believe it.

His shoulders were made wide and broad so as not to fall apart in sheer bliss at the sight, at the feel, of _this_.

__________________________

“Whatcha lookin’ at?”

Bucky settles in next to Steve in their bed, where Steve’s just staring, really. Unsure of why or how.

Just staring at his hands.

“They look,” Steve tries to put it in words, when that’d probably be an insult. “I...”

Bucky turns, rests a palm on Steve’s chest.

“Steve?”

“I don’t draw anymore,” Steve blurts out, because somehow it all ties together in his mind. “I tried, for a little while, but my hands, I,” he looks down, flexes his fingers out in front of him until Bucky reaches and grabs them in his own left grip.

“They couldn’t grab you,” Steve hisses, pushes out like poison through his teeth: “so what _were_ they good for.”

And Bucky says nothing, just holds those hands all the firmer, all the dearer, and in bringing them to his own chest and kissing their fingertips like the flutter of wings, he gives Steve the greatest gift; he loves Steve from every inch.

“But I,” Steve whispers; “I want to draw. I,” and he turns, stares at his hands on Bucky’s body and gapes, just a little.

“They don’t make me sad, anymore.”

And the words shock him, coming out of his mouth. Because beyond all reason, somehow, they are _true_.

“It happens when you’re not looking for it, I know,” Bucky murmurs, smiling at Steve’s wonderment and kissing him, firm and deep. “Take a deep breath and let it sink in for a sec, yeah?”

And Steve does, but he’s still staring at Bucky, not quite comprehending, until Bucky spells it out for him.

“ _Healing_ , Stevie,” he says simply. “It happens when you’re not looking for it.”

Huh.

So it does.

__________________________

Steve’s wandering, when he finds Bucky sitting on the table. His heart drops, for a second, but Bucky’s smiling, and the physician next to him is returning the look and it takes so much less time than it used to for Steve to be at ease once more, and to just look at the love of his life for a second, suspended in time.

“Would you like to join him?”

Steve almost jumps at the voice; T’Challa’s considering him kindly, if a little rueful.

“Oh, no, I,” Steve stumbles, caught out doing nothing, really, save admiring his heart on display. He flushes. “Sorry.”

“Do not apologize,” T’Challa brushes him off. “Come.”

Steve follows when T’Challa enters the lab, but they don’t walk straight to Bucky, who catches his eye on a whim and grins wide, nudges the technician looking at his arm where it fits around his new vibranium tac suit, and nods over to Steve, eying him with the kind of heartfelt, unwavering pride that might stop Steve's heart in his chest one day, if it ever quits sending it pumping like mad for sheer joy.

“Would you like one, too?”

T’Challa’s considering him openly, but not threateningly. Taking stock of him, and for the question, seeming to find him not-lacking, at the very least.

“I,” Steve blinks. “Me?”

T’Challa grins. “Yes, _you_.”

“I,” Steve takes a deep breath, and finds himself swimming a little, unmoored: finds himself wondering if that _is_ what he wants.

“I don’t know,” he finally says, and it would have torn him apart before, to admit it. Nearly did, that one time he said as much to Sam.

It still doesn’t settle right, but it does settle, and that’s progress, he thinks.

That’s enough, just for now.

“Think on it,” T’Challa nods, no offense, only understanding there. “There is no right or wrong answer to this question.”

“I think,” Steve suddenly says, offers without prompting for no discernable reason, save that he can, and it feels right; “I think I might be done fighting for a little while.”

T’Challa’s smile grows softer, yet wider.

“That,” he says, low and profound somehow; “is another question, entirely. And in its case,” he grips Steve’s shoulder briefly: “You may have found your right answer.”

__________________________

They’re sprawled on the ground, middle of the night, and Steve’s never seen a sky like this, one that makes his chest crack open anywhere near the way he feels for Bucky does that job.

“You make the stars looks bright again,” Steve whispers, holding Bucky’s body to him close, no space between as their breaths catch, as their hearts slow, as the night air cools them and the grass tickles their skin for the love splayed open under the infinitude above them.

“I didn’t know how to look at them, after,” Steve says, trails off; “I haven’t…”

And he turns, so that Bucky’s eyes are the only thing for him to see: better than even these perfect stars.

“Stay,” Steve breathes. “Stay, forever, I,” his throat closes up, and the rest comes out as a plea, a moan:

“Please, tell me that you’ll stay.”

And Bucky cups his face, and kisses his eyes, and holds him close enough to feel the words where they rumble deep in his chest to where the come into the world like lightning in the dark. 

“You are my home,” Bucky says to him, with all due conviction, with all heart and soul. “I have spent enough time away from my home.”

And if they sleep like that, that night under the stars, it doesn’t really matter in the end.

They’re home.

__________________________

 

“So T’Challa offered you a new suit, that right?”

Steve looks up from where he’s sitting on an outcropping of rock, sketching the landscape beyond, smearing the graphite with the pad of his ring finger.

“Yeah,” Steve says, scooting over so Bucky can sit next to him, can put down the pack he’s carrying. “Yeah, he did,” and Steve looks back to the skyline, trying to place is just right on the paper.

“I turned him down.”

Bucky hums, no judgement in it, and looks over Steve’s shoulder at his work in a way Steve used to shrug off in annoyance— _it’s not fucking done yet, jerk_ —but had missed with every piece of him for so long that the return of it is a punch to the gut, a balm to the soul. 

“I,” Steve only pauses a second before he just asks it, because it’s okay to ask. It’s okay to wonder. It’s okay to need. 

“Is it hiding, or,” he swallows hard; “or running away, if I say I want to stay here a little longer? Stay, out. Out of it all?”

Bucky leans his head on Steve’s shoulder, and watches the scene Steve’s trying to capture with particular intensity. 

“Stevie, even if it was either of those things, hell, baby,” Bucky turns for a kiss to the line of Steve’s jaw. “It’s about time you learned when that was the smartest route.”

Steve smiles tight, but it’s a smile, before Bucky takes the tightness right out of the curve of his lips with three little words:

“But it isn’t.”

And suddenly, where something heavy should have fallen from Steve’s heart at that, nothing does. There’s nothing left to.

There’s just a reverberation of all this impossible _warmth_.

“Got something for you.”

Steve turns, and Bucky reaches for the bag he’d set aside.

“A wise man told me,” Bucky’s saying, as he unzips the casing of whatever it is that he’s brought; “that to stand without banner, without nation, but for what it means to live, is to stand up for nothing less than the human soul.”

And that’s when Steve registers the obvious: the package is circular.

His heart skips, a little. 

“You always stood for those things,” Bucky says softly, smiling. “Sometimes, you had to use force to keep your footing, but you were never a fighter, Stevie, not in here.” He stops fiddling with the case to press a hand to Steve’s chest, above his heart. “Not ‘til they made you into one.”

“And I,” Bucky bites his lip, shakes his head with just a tilt. “I might be wrong, but I can’t help but think that you’ve been hurting, at least a little, because you’ve had to keep up the ruse. An icon, a warrior not for a cause, but against an enemy.”

And Bucky’s right. Bucky’s right, because it’s been hard as _hell_ sometimes. For so long, he couldn’t look in a mirror not just for how his body looked, unrecognizable, but for the soul in his eyes: just as much a stranger.

That’s starting to change, though. Now he looks in the mirror, and Bucky’s wrapped around him from behind, and it feels _right_.

“So this,” and Bucky flips open the case and reveals plain silver, gleaming bright. 

“This doesn’t have colors, or banners, or anything tied up in earning it, or doing it some twisted kind of justice, being _worthy_ , like anyone can measure that shit, like anyone can _know_.”

Bucky glances down, takes a breath, and then meets Steve’s eyes with unwavering purpose as he says:

“This is for you. Because in your heart, you fight for things. You _protect_. And that’s what a shield’s for, isn’t it?” Bucky takes the shield in both hands, and holds it to him. “Whether you take it into battle or just keep it by our bed. That’s _you_.”

And Steve’s eyes water, his throat clenches, and he doesn’t know what to say. He just takes the shield, and weighs it against open hands, and feels it more right than ever before, and whispers: 

“ _Thank you_.”

And Bucky goes to hug him, shield in the way and all, but Steve’s quicker, puts it down and holds him close, chest to chest and that’s the best shield Steve could ever ask for; the most safety, the deepest protection he could ever dream to know.

“Wanna give her a go?” Bucky asks with a grin when they finally part. “Don’t think it’s ever been done, has it? Shield to shield?”

And no, Steve thinks. Probably not.

“Yeah,” he smiles back. “But later.” He eyes Bucky meaningfully. 

“Think I’d rather give _you_ a go, just now.”

And Bucky doesn’t even bother glancing around them to make sure they’re alone before the fire starts burning in his gaze and he damn well growls:

“Later works, yeah.”

And god, dear _god_ :

They’ve got a _later_ to look _forward_ to.

**Author's Note:**

> [Tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com).
> 
> And again: companion series in which Bucky and Steve continue the fealing process in Wakanda in the lead-up to _Infinity War_ : **[The World We Forge Unending](https://archiveofourown.org/series/892896)**


End file.
